


The lies in the air smell rotten

by JisatsuKatsudon



Series: Sneering Acorn [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Book 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Fae & Fairies, Harry Potter Has a Twin, Wrong Boy-Who-Lived (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28814934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JisatsuKatsudon/pseuds/JisatsuKatsudon
Summary: Luna Lovegood was well-aware that she was different than the norm. After all, she and Harrison had been blessed, and no amount of jealousy from others could stop that. She was looking forward to the knowledge to be found in Hogwarts and its surroundings. Harrison had told her that the woods were far too silent, but surely Luna’s presence could stop that, right?My take on fae and what they bring with them. This is the second book.Disclaimer: I'm sadly or luckily not J.K.Rowling and everything that sounds familiar and every name that you know is probably not mine.
Series: Sneering Acorn [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111436
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	The lies in the air smell rotten

**Author's Note:**

> welcome back for my take on chamber of secrets. another big thanks goes to my beta sopapilla8 who has to fight with my long sentences and far too many ands. 
> 
> have fun, kats :))
> 
> (also this is an alternate universe and things that are different or chracters that seem ooc are wanted that way. don't like, don't read)

Luna Lovegood was well-aware that she was different than the norm. After all, she and Harrison had been blessed, and no amount of jealousy from others could stop that. She was looking forward to the knowledge to be found in Hogwarts and its surroundings. Harrison had told her that the woods were far too silent, but surely Luna’s presence could stop that, right?

“Why didn’t you answer any of my letters?”, Alex asked in a tone that would signal to everyone else that he didn’t care about the answer. Theo could see the slight crinkle of his eyebrows however and the way that the younger Potter twin’s eyes were focused on his slender hands full of rune-like marks, instead of his best friend. “I did”, he simply answered, before automatically tilting his head to mirror Alex. There were some things you picked up on around the two most fascinating people in the castle. 

The summer had been a rush of screams and acid and fluttering wings in his peripheral vision and sharp magic that slowly warmed up to him and screams and acid and… Needless to say, the forest was delighted to have Harry and Luna back together. The younger boy didn’t even expect to sleep until after midnight anymore. Tokens filled their house, even more so than before. Bones had joined the more harmless things, small branches were broken and twisted into forms that burned Alex’s eyes. Drawings of patterns in the dust made him shiver while walking by and the walls had gotten even darker since Yule. 

The four adults didn’t seem to notice anything, not even when food started to disappear and when whispers kept the twins up all night. In between it all, Alex just longed for something normal, something that bound him to the quieter Hogwarts, something like friends. Or their letters, at least one at his birthday, but nothing ever came. The invitations weren’t returned, but nobody came on the twin’s special day, except for Luna. But the daughter of the moon and the son of the trees never wrote any letters so Alex wasn’t surprised to see the bare-footed girl there, drawings creeping up her legs before being obscured by the dark blue skirt she was wearing. The boy had huffed and buried himself in his bed, unable to nap while Harry was awake and about, but unwilling to move away from the comforting warmth either way. 

So if Theo answered his letters and none ever came, that meant that Harry had probably done something to stop them from coming through. Or he had hidden and gifted them to the baby trolls he had made friends with. Anger surged through Alex like fire, burning the lies for a second and making him feel like a phoenix. Theo flinched back on the bench when the air around them sang with something that made the boy want to tear his ears off. It was gone as fast as it had come, leaving behind a silence that tasted of ashes. “Sorry”, Alex murmured. 

They never spoke of it again. 

Thestrals were beautiful creatures. They seemed to suck away the light and make it forgotten. Luna loved the way they moved their necks and the sounds they made when she fed them meat that she had gotten from the kitchens. Harry was leaning against a tree and watching the dark creatures play and jump and dance around Luna as if she was their sun. Creatures loved her and he knew that it was because of her high cheekbones and ethereal smile. She was like the wind and they sensed it like they smelled things to eat. The boy blinked, eyes joining Luna’s song and the whispers that rose around them. 

“Let us go”, he murmured and while Luna looked surprised for just a second, she took the boy’s hand and let herself be pulled out from the forest. They didn’t talk when they neared the castle again. The Ravenclaw understood now what Harry had meant in his letters in the first year, telling her about how confusing the magic of the castle was. It tasted sugary and dangerous and always brought a smile to Luna’s face, even if her head hurt. “Hanging out with the creepy boy, huh, Looney?” It had been one of her fellow students, hiding behind his blue tie, as if it could save him from Harry’s wrath. But Harry was a Gryffindor, he would never do anything like that. As a Slytherin, Alex surely was the mean one in the family, right? Well, Luna wouldn’t correct them. The next day, all of Eddie Carmichael’s books had been burnt to a crisp. 

Only Luna could read the runes in the ashes. 

The day Filch’s cat died, Draco had decided to get over his fear of the Potters and approach Alex for some help with their Defense Against the Dark Arts essay. The other boy had received Outstandings in all of their classes and while Draco was anything but a bad student, his father had still told him enough times over the course of the summer that no Potter should be better than his son. Theo and Alex accepted his presence with a smile and a blank stare respectively, and Draco had to say that they weren’t quite as scary as he had thought they would be. They were almost kind of funny, and when the sarcastic Blaise Zabini joined their little group, Draco got comfortable. 

Nobody was allowed to leave the common room and no one knew why. Severus had delivered it with his usual drawl and Draco hadn’t dared question his godfather. He had simply tried to continue with his essay, but he got distracted from it several times. The first time, Alex cursed in a language that wasn’t English or any other language Draco could identify. The word made Draco’s skin burn and Theo flinch a little. The second time, Alex and Theo stared at each other for so long that even the Malfoy heir and Blaise could smell the silence. And the third time, Alex was called out of the common room and he left with yet another dangerous murmured curse. Theo just tiredly closed his eyes. 

That night, none of the four boys were able to fall asleep until long after midnight. Theo was sat on Alex’s bed and listened with a cold expression when Potter whispered about runes, dead cats, and whispers in the pipes. Draco and Blaise were only able to hear those words and they kept sleep away from their dormitory. The rustle of flying birds eventually lulled everyone to sleep. 

They all had the same dream that night. 

Dobby was growing impatient. He had tried to get into the Potter Manor over the summer, but it was so heavily warded that he had hurt himself trying to get in. Of course, he had been able to withhold the letters, but the three children with the screeching souls had simply walked through the barrier, even after Dobby had used all his might to stop them from doing so. He was slowly running out of ideas, especially since he had discovered that neither of the boys had made the Quidditch team, much to their father's chagrin.

The house-elf had had the plan to injure Alex so much that he had to retreat from the school and if not Alex, then at least his brother. Maybe that would make the boy see sense. Nothing had worked and now a cat was dead and the first child had been petrified. Dobby was getting impatient. Impatient enough to appear in Alex’s bedroom to try to talk him out of staying in the school. Something dangerous, something dark, something life-threatening was in the castle and he tried to tell the boy so. But the green-eyed saviour simply laughed. “At least I’m not possessed by a sickening illness that destroys everyone of my kind”, the boy answered in a voice that gave away that the words weren’t his. The green eyes burned Dobby, so he fled. 

Dobby was too scared to come to Hogwarts after that. 

Harry had had many interesting conversations with the book. It was old, with a soul younger than Harry’s and it told him stories of times passed and magic that was so long gone that Harry couldn’t even taste it anymore. The boy in the book was as pure as they got. Even if the older twin had to fight against vomiting every time he was near the air which had been poisoned by the purity, he kept going back in. He had told Luna about it, but the girl had simply met his malicious little smile with a dreamy one of her own and had firmly told him that she wouldn’t talk to ghosts that didn’t behave like ghosts at all. 

That night, Harry and Luna covered the book in twisted runes and burned it together. 

The next person that almost died was a friend of Susan and she refused to meet the Slytherins after his petrification. Alex murmured a curse that left Susan unable to speak for a week. “Who do you think it is?”, Draco asked. He and Blaise had become a part of their group and weren't about to leave it, as they knew that Alex had insight into things they didn’t. “I don’t know”, Alex answered and he was glad that Harry wasn’t around to smell the lies in the air. He had his suspicions about the nature of the ‘accidents’, but he hadn’t shared them with anyone but Theo. The Nott heir had also thought that they shouldn’t get in the way. 

Even if the foolish headmaster had them celebrate Halloween, they didn’t. Instead, Alex and Theo met with Harry and Luna in the woods and burned wishes to the universe. That night, the dead came with such power that all four of them could feel them and for once, the son of the tree was the one who had to close his eyes and press his hands to his ears. Power was loud and its song could be deadly. The wishes were runes, carved into the branch of the forgotten flower behind the waterfalls. Theo didn’t know how they got the flower, since it wanted death, before being plucked. 

He didn’t ask. 

Ron stammered something about spiders and Hermione talked about dead roosters, deathly stares, and eyes in the pipes. She talked about runes made of blood each time somebody found another petrified body and what they meant. She talked about strange noises in the night and whispers about a certain Nicholas. She talked about the books she read and the pages she found. She talked about how she would be able to name the monster of Slytherin soon. She talked about many interesting things. It was getting annoying. 

The next day, Hermione was found petrified. 

The thestrals were growing antsy. Neither of the two children knew what had them this nervous. They ran and ran and never stopped, it was getting hard to feed them. That evening, Harry found another dead unicorn in the woods. He left it to be found by her sisters. The nargles were trying to bite through Neville’s skull. It left him distant and a bit meaner than normally. He stopped talking to Alex. The spiders in the woods despised the interruption by yet another pair of children. But these two brought more than questions. The centaurs tried to stop the Ravenclaw and the Slytherin from going into the woods. 

They weren’t successful. 

“I know where it is”, Harry told Alex and Theo during potions class. They nodded and followed the boy after class, without any questions. The boys missed the shock everyone had when they read the message about the youngest Weasley. Down and down they went, through dirty pipes and far too big rooms until they saw their founder. The path was too wet, full of puddles and the stench of rotten flesh. The walls reminded Alex of something, but he didn’t say anything. They were all silent. 

Luna was waiting with Ginny’s unconscious body. Her blonde hair was made up in intricate patterns, braids running over her scalp. She was smiling and even if in Theo’s eyes, there should have been blood dripping from her teeth, there wasn’t. She seemed as fair and beautiful as always and Alex could feel her patience. So they had been right with their guess after all. It was Harry’s doing. 

“How long?”, Alex asked and he saw the glitter in Harry’s sneer out of the corner of his eyes. “Since the beginning.” Pride was audible, and it vibrated through the air like a song nobody understood. “The basilisk is our child”, Luna added and Theo shivered, despite not feeling cold in the slightest. “Yet another sentence that wasn’t yours”, Alex murmured dreamily and the accusation stood between them, ugly, rotten, and wrong. All the smiles in the room had dropped and more than one person showed their malice openly. 

“One of the pure ones stole him.” Three pairs of eyes turned to Theo, who took a step back. “So one of the pure ones needs to die for it.” Four pairs of eyes turned to Ginny on the ground. The force in the room was bigger than all of them. “We destroyed the first one with our language”, the two wild ones said at the same time. Alex didn’t know what was going on, and Theo once again did the most sensible thing. He turned and ran. He knew too much. The force didn’t like it, but Alex simply glared at the air. 

“You can’t do that”, he said eventually, breaking the four eyes of nature away from their chosen victim. Luna and Harry stopped and looked at Alex with childish curiosity. Magic raged around the younger boy and screamed with her hatred. Trying to stop him from stopping them. “He wouldn’t have wanted it.” The words brought blissful silence and somewhere, far away, a gravestone burst into tears. “We need to bring her back up. Tell them lies about the basilisk, the original one, and what happened.”

The two almost-murderers stepped away from the red-haired girl. “Shame”, a new voice commented in a language that made Alex’s teeth freeze. The basilisk was big and magnificent, but Alex met his eyes without any fear. “I am hungry.” Alex was very glad for second eyelids and the protection of a horned creature when he heard the need in the basilisk’s voice. Visions fluttered around him, implanting the feeling of sharp teeth through fresh meat and still pulsing hearts into his head. He felt the hunger of centuries, the anger of centuries, the fear of centuries. All he could do was reach out to pet the snake’s nose. “I’m sorry”, his heart sang in the music of the silver snakes. 

The basilisk went back to sleep after chatting with his equal. Harry seemed visibly disappointed and Luna was her usual, uncaring self. The three of them carried the almost fallen girl back to the living world. The headmaster tried to read their minds, but Alex could feel something shift in his head to protect his thoughts. The string tugged on the twins’ conscience. “It was the book”, Harry said in a sad voice and explained lie after lie with innocent conviction in his words. 

The creature glimpsing out of the forgotten light shifted slightly.


End file.
